Application of Geographic Information System to Decision-making Meteorological Service System

Based on the component GIS technology, a framework of decision-making meteorological service system is proposed, which is composed of three layers. The lower layer is the data layer where meteorological data, geospatial data and socioeconomic data are mainly stored, and fundamental data for upper layers are provided. The middle layer is a general core meteorological component developed by GIS components, which is composed of many basic functions and interfaces to support the upper application such as interpolation algorithm and spatial measurements. The upper layer is the service platform including specific features for products building and decision-making. This multi-tiers architecture has greatly enhanced the reusing, sharing and scalability of the application. Six features of the system are introduced in brief as follows :Electronic map querying, meteorological mapping, historical and real time data retrieval, damage statistics and analysis, typhoon warning and damage assessment, and customize mapping automatically. Five key issues of GIS applying to meteorological service system are addressed. Firstly, to make current meteorological data share with GIS community, conversion method of meteorological data to the GIS format are discussed, complying with GIS concept data model, such as shape and GRID format. Secondly, spatial interpolation algorithm is focused on, and the potential and limitations of existing GIS interpolation functionality for specialization of meteorological and climate data are studied, and then a recommendation algorithm for specific application is set up. Thirdly, the meteorological element retrieval based on spatial technology is discussed. The fourth key issue is that plug-in software technology is adopted to build an assessment model about typhoon disaster evaluation, which can easily be added to and removed from the system since the model is changed constantly. Last, a surface model is introduced to implement three-dimensional visualization of meteorological data. In conclusion, it is found that the meteorological mapping capability can be greatly strengthened by GIS, the visualization effect of services produces can be improved, and spatial retrieval of meteorological elements can be implemented, disaster weather can be analyzed deeply for auxiliary decisionmaking.